Pakistan quake aid scaled back after militant revenge attacks

Aid efforts for thousands of earthquake and flood victims in Pakistan have been affected by violence sparked by the recent siege of the Red Mosque. UN and relief agencies have suspended operations in part of North-West Frontier Province following a spate of attacks last week.

A mob ransacked stores and torched offices belonging to Care International, the Red Cross and four other organisations in Batagram, an area badly affected by the October 2005 quake that killed more than 73,000 people.

Foreign staff have been evacuated to Islamabad and local staff advised to lie low. Work continues in nearby Mansehra, a big aid hub, but staff movements are restricted. "We're not expecting more trouble but we'll wait and see what happens on Friday. That's usually the hot day," said a UN security official.

More than 100 people have died in militant attacks across NWFP since the siege started on July 3. Yesterday a suicide bomber killed three soldiers in North Waziristan, near the Afghan border, where a 10-month-old peace deal between militants and the government has just collapsed.

Tensions are high in pockets of the quake zone where many mosque students, some of whom are still missing, came from. The UK-based charity Plan said it had imposed a curfew on female employees and suspended work on 10 schools it is building in the Siran Valley.

"Field work has stopped," said Natasha Kamal, Plan's communications officer, who said there were 85 madrasas in Batagram. "The danger is not from the communities we work with, which have always welcomed us. It's the fundamentalists that are the real problem."

Dorothy Blane, country director for Concern, another charity, said relief operations were continuing but the surge in suicide attacks was "of particular concern".

The fallout from the siege was also felt hundreds of miles to the southwest in Baluchistan and Sindh provinces, where 30,000 people have been displaced by catastrophic floods earlier this month. British aid agency Shelterbox was forced to evacuate its personnel to the UK last weekend after security warnings from Pakistani and British authorities.

"It's a quite toned-down Islamic area but you don't know how the situation will go," said Mark Pearson, who had been working in the coastal town of Turbat in Baluchistan, but is now in the UK. "But we're hoping to get back out there within a week. We've got to get back on top of the situation."

Flood workers had complained that the siege had distracted attention from a big humanitarian crisis. A combination of a cyclone and torrential rains hit at least 6,000 villages in the two provinces late last month. Relief efforts were hampered by surging waves that cut off road access to some of the worst affected areas.

Mr Pearson said many flood victims accused the government of neglecting their plight. "They started to get angry. Food hadn't been adequately distributed and it was very difficult working in 50C conditions," he said.

The violence in NWFP marks the second time that Islamists have disturbed relief efforts this year. In May the UN suspended activities in quake-hit Bagh district in Pakistani-administered Kashmir after one UN staffer had his house torched and another was beaten up in the street.

A senior UN official said the attacks may have been linked to local politics as much as radical Islam. Shortly before the incidents the MMA alliance of religious parties claimed it had been cheated of an election seat by a retired army officer who had also been appointed minister for reconstruction.

The official said the unrest in NWFP was "serious" but predicted it would not last long. "The elders have already established contact. They want our help," he said.